Director/Screenplay – Jared Moshé, Producers – Neda Armian & T. Justin Ross, Photography – Nicholas Bupp, Music – H. Scott Salinas, Visual Effects Supervisor – Tomas D. Moser, Production Design – Kati Simon & Ariel Vida. Production Company – Armian Pictures/Soapbox Films/Bondit Media Capital.
Cast
Judy Greer (Sophie Rice), Edi Gathegi (Malcolm Rice), Payman Maadi (Jabir Karim), Faithe Herman (Riley Rice), Whitney Morgan Cox (Kara Brinkley), Veda Cienfuegos (Aggie Brinkley), Elohim Nycalove (Riley Rice), Adam O’Byrne (Darby Brinkley)
Plot
In Los Angeles, Sophie Rice is struggling on her own, trying to raise her daughter Riley in the aftermath of her husband Malcolm being killed by a drunk driver. Her friend Jabir Karim comes to her, offering a suggestion. He and Malcolm constructed a time machine with the intention of going back and preventing Jabir’s family from being killed by terrorists. However, they found that the machine was only useful for sending a particle back into the past up to five years – not far enough to save Jabir’s family. Jabir’s suggests that they use the machine to send back a particle that will kill the drunk driver Darby Brinkley and prevent Malcolm’s death. They do so and Sophie is happy to find Malcolm alive and well again as though nothing happened. She eventually tells Malcolm what happened. At the same time, Sophie becomes concerned for Darby’s widow Kara, who was financially ruined by his death, and befriends her. Feeling responsible for Kara’s situation, Sophie begins to wonder if it would be right to use the time machine to make things better for Kara too.
Aporia is a solid and well worthwhile story all told with a contained simplicity. Unlike Marty McFly in Back to the Future (1985) or Jean-Claude Van Damme in Timecop (1994), it uses the alternate timelines themes to paint a human face on the question of moral choices that face someone altering the timestream. The central question that hangs over the film is to what extent Judy Greer is responsible for the life of Whitney Morgan Cox, the wife of the man she eliminated from the timeline out of personal vengeance, and of her dilemmas in trying to do things that make life better for Whitney. This does arrive at a jolt twist in mid film that works more than effectively. All before the film arrives at an ending that is left deliberately ambiguous.
Judy Greer and husband Edi Gathegi reunited
Aporia is shot with an admirable minimalism. There is a principal cast of three who are in most scenes and only 3-4 others who appear in more than one scene throughout. Most of the film is contained within the environs of a single suburban Los Angeles home. The time edits are conducted with a perfect simplicity – simply cuts to another scene and then Judy Greer and others becoming aware as they go about life that some things are different. The most fantastical anything ever gets is the time machine, which looks like a giant mutated engine block sitting in the spare room of Payman Maadi’s house.
Judy Greer is an actress who has never much impacted on me or made an imprint in memory before, but does solid work here. Edi Gathegi is an actor that has been doing consistently strong and intelligent work elsewhere and does not disappoint as the husband.
Aporia was the third film directed and written by Jared Moshé who had previously made the Westerns Dead Man’s Burden (2012) and The Ballad of Lefty Brown (2017), as well as produced several documentaries.
